The Lieutenant Vanishes
by CaptainSmirk
Summary: If the past is a foreign country one should expect the occasional Blitzkrieg on the present.
1. Prologue

_Disclaimer: I do not own the characters you already recognize from HH. No copyright infringement is intended. It's all just a bit of fun._

_HH HH HH HH  
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Sergeant Kinchloe bent down to examine his cell mate. Dressed in a grubby flight suit and decrepit leather jacket, the slim, fair-haired man's breathing was labored and his pulse was faint. He had already been unconscious when they had arrived at the medieval keep that was acting as temporary headquarters for the local Gestapo. The rough handling by the guards probably hadn't helped his condition any. Kinch started to lift his companion's eyelid with the idea of checking his pupils and then realized there wasn't enough light filtering through the gaps in the heavy planks that made up the door. With a sigh the large, black sergeant straightened and moved away as far as he could within the confines of the small room into which he'd been shoved.

It was not a traditional cell. Just a small, rectangular room that had probably spent several centuries as a larder for the now disused kitchens. It was, however, structurally sound, which could hardly be said for much of the rest of the old ruin and certainly couldn't be said for the former Gestapo offices which the Allies had firebombed the previous week. Presumably the goons had not yet managed to clear a path to the old dungeon to set up operations.

There's a war on, thought Kinch. Sometimes even the Gestapo has to sacrifice its usual brand of hospitality.

For the sake of form, he did a quick examination of the walls and the door, but found no easy weakness to exploit. He wasn't planning on escape anyway. He needed to stay and keep an eye on Sleeping Beauty. It would be disastrous if he were to regain consciousness while in Gestapo custody. Kinch wondered when the drug that had been administered to the man would wear off. He had managed to hide a syringe with a small dosage in his boot, but he was loathe to use it. His companion had not reacted well to the first dose and Kinch didn't really want a corpse on his hands. If the man threatened to squawk perhaps he could just hit him.

Again.


	2. Feuerwasser

Only a few days earlier Kinch's biggest concerns had been setting up a rendezvous for Corporal Newkirk's little old lady with the greengrocer, fielding a request for assistance from a Cologne operative known as Babylon and checking the various bugs that he'd set up around the camp. Change came the way it always did--with a sucker punch.

He was in the yard with Sergeant Carter when the first feint came. Newkirk, in his little old lady disguise, had been to Hammelburg and returned, having filled a shopping list for Corporal Lebeau, as well as obtaining the plans for an armament factory. While Colonel Hogan had not yet approved Babylon's request he had been on the radio with London trying to find out what priority to give the operative. All that remained for Kinch to do was complete the inspection of the phone taps and bugs. He'd drafted Carter to help him and they had covered their true purpose by carrying several lengths of clothesline which they were ostensibly ready to install whenever one of the camp guards bothered to question them. They'd been arguing, not seriously, over the relative merits of the Tigers and the White Sox, when Kinch suddenly realized that he was talking to himself.

"Shit."

It had been said so quietly, Kinch wasn't sure that he'd actually heard it. He certainly couldn't believe that it had come from Sergeant Carter who usually stuck to euphemisms. The strongest phrase Kinch had ever heard him use was a weary, "aw, nuts" when a faulty timer had led one of his bombs to detonate before he'd gotten out of the blast zone. His hair had been singed and it had taken a week for the blisters on his back to disappear, but he'd never griped about it after his initial outburst.

If near incineration didn't inspire Carter to utilize foul language, what would provoke that kind of response out of the man? Kinch followed the gaze of his fellow prisoner and looked at the party emerging from the staff car in front of the commandant's office. One member was the familiar figure of General Burkhalter. He led a Luftwaffe captain, whom Kinch had never before seen, and an apparent civilian with a neatly trimmed graying beard into Klink's office.

Well, it couldn't have been General Burkhalter, thought Kinch. While the General would cheerfully order the formation of a firing squad had he ever caught one of Hogan's team in the act, he'd never been particularly frightening in the normal course of events. Was it the captain or the civilian? The captain seemed unlikely, but Kinch was never quite sure of everything that Carter or the others got up to when working outside. The civilian seemed even more unlikely, but it was impossible to tell without further information, he concluded. Still that look in Carter's eye made him uneasy. He grabbed the sergeant by the arm and pulled him into the barracks.

"Come on, let's listen in," he said. "The practical test, right?"

After hustling Carter into Colonel Hogan's office he began to set up the coffee pot radio receiver that picked up the bug in Colonel Klink's office. Within seconds the two sergeants had been joined by the rest of the team who had also noticed the arrival of the staff car.

Klink was speaking, "But Herr General, the prisoners have been questioned numerous times by everybody from the Luftwaffe to the Gestapo to myself. What is it that you think Dr. Falkner will find out?"

"Dr. Marler has slightly different methods than the Gestapo," said General Burkhalter. "He tends to obtain better information and his subjects don't usually require medical treatment when he's finished with them."

"Well that takes all the fun out of it," commented Colonel Hogan with mock indignation.

"For Jerry," added Corporal Newkirk.

"I assure you, Herr Colonel," Dr. Falkner's soothing voice said. "My sessions will do little to disrupt the routine here at Stalag 13. I pride myself on obtaining information without causing undue alarm amongst the prisoners. I like to think that I even have had success helping them cope with--but of course, that is not of particular interest to the Luftwaffe."

"Allow him access to the prisoner files, Klink," said Burkhalter. "From there he can make a determination as to whom he will see first."

"Of course, General Burkhalter!"

"Dr. Falkner, you will join me in Hammelburg for lunch while your quarters are prepared. Klink, see to it."

Kinch switched off the receiver and looked at the group of men gathered in Colonel Hogan's office to gauge their reactions. The colonel was casual, but Kinch knew his mind was busy examining all the angles, weighing options and assessing the likely risk of this new development. Newkirk's blase facial expression was the same one he wore when playing poker, while Lebeau was clearly nervous at the thought of yet another round of interrogation. Carter seemed to be staring at fixed point in space that lay somewhere beyond the room in which he stood.

"What are they after?" Hogan finally asked. "It's always better if you know what they're after."

"It's just a fishing expedition," Carter said dully.

"Tricky," said Newkirk. "It's hard to hide information when you don't know what it is."

"What kind of doctor is this guy, anyway?" asked Kinch.

"Headshrinker," Carter answered again in the same dull, distant tone.

"Oh, that kind of game," said Hogan. "That's the--hey, how do you know this, Carter?"

"I've met him."

There were exclamations of disbelief from three out of the four other men in the room. Kinch remained silent. He alone had heard Carter's earlier outburst and had begun to feel his stomach shrinking into a hard, small knot. He wasn't sure he wanted to meet the man that could knock the wind out of Carter's sails.

"He came to my first stalag. We all met him in groups and he picked men to meet individually." Carter's gaze had dropped to the floor. "I think he was working his way through the navigators before he got to the bombardiers. I canceled my appointment."

"How can you cancel an interrogation?" asked Lebeau.

"I finished my tunnel and escaped." Carter lifted his eyes to meet Lebeau's and a ghost of a smile touched his lips as he added, "You remember Lieutenant Carter, don't you?"

"Blimey, I always forget you're actually one of them," said Newkirk.

"Them?" asked Hogan blankly.

"An officer. Begging your pardon, sir."

"Gee, thanks," said Carter.

"That really stings, Newkirk," said Hogan.

"Wait a minute," Kinch said. "If Dr. Falkner has met Lieutenant Carter and he's about to meet Sergeant Carter--"

"O, merde!" interjected Lebeau.

*****

Lieutenant Carter had spent three weeks in camp observing the operation before he'd started working on an escape plan. He'd identified the guards who could be bribed, persuaded the men in his barracks to give him the rottenest of their potato rations and set up a still in which to create something with which to bribe the guards. He'd started digging on the sly and had been surprised and gratified at the number of volunteers who had materialized. It had probably helped that five of the fliers in the barracks had been in his training squadron. They had vouched for him with the other men and the Escape Committee.

The important thing, he knew, was not to get bored. He always got into trouble when he was bored. Prison life was very boring, indeed, but between running his still and the tunneling Carter kept himself pretty busy. When not underground he ambled around the camp visiting with men from the other barracks to keep up with the news.

Lieutenant Colonel Sykes, the senior POW of Barracks Seven, considered himself a connoisseur of spirits and consulted with him over the quality of the hooch that Carter produced. As the chairman of the Escape Committee, Sykes gave approval for the diggers to hollow out a space within the tunnel to house the still. It would have been a shame, he said, if some guard got overly zealous in his inspection and confiscated it from its original hiding place.

During his second month in camp the Committee had decided that the young lieutenant was going to do the test run of both the tunnel he'd helped dig and the new escape route that the Underground had given to them. The Members had some doubts about the route, which they had openly expressed to Carter. The biggest gut check was that the escaped man was instructed to head toward a Stalag outside of Hammelburg.

"No one has ever escaped from Stalag 13," said Major Holder. "I hear it's the toughest POW camp in Germany. But maybe the security there is so tight and the prisoners so cowed that the local population doesn't even register a man in an Allied uniform."

"That seems kind of unlikely, sir," said Carter.

"I know that, but it's the word that's been passed to us through reliable sources."

"Well, I'm willing to give it a try, sir."

The escape was delayed by the arrival of a visitor to camp. At first, few of the prisoners even realized he was there. What the Escape Committee noticed was the small, but steady trickle of top brass that descended upon the camp. Holder and Sykes were nervous and refused to even allow a vote on the operation until the heavy security all those extra generals created had lightened up. A week later Captain Jenkins and Lieutenant Mitchell reported during the Unhappy Hour Meeting that they had encountered the object of all this interest.

"He's just another interrogator," said Mitchell dismissively.

"Not 'just' another interrogator," corrected Captain Jenkins. "He's pretty slick."

"How so?" Sykes asked.

"Friendly, personable and about as far from a goose-stepper as you can get. He met with six of us. Very informal. We talked about bird hunting for a good half hour."

"Like pursuit planes versus bombers?" asked Carter.

"No, like ducks, quail, or grouse."

"That seems innocuous enough," said Sykes.

"Yeah, that's what worries me," said Jenkins. "He also scheduled appointments to meet with three of the boys individually. Walters, Kelly and Mitchell here."

"What for? To debate the merits of the Wachtelhund versus the Golden Retriever?"

Neither Mitchell nor Jenkins could offer much more information and the meeting broke up. The escape was to be postponed indefinitely. Carter was disappointed, but decided that he could spend the extra time studying the maps.

As it turned out, he didn't get quite as much time to himself as he'd hoped. After evening roll call, Jenkins slipped into the barracks that the prisoners had re-dubbed "New No. 7" to speak with Sykes. Seeing Carter lounging on his bunk, he beckoned him over to the office to join the discussion.

"Look, sir," said Jenkins, "I don't like the set up with this guy. I don't know what he's after, but wouldn't it be a good idea to find out?"

"Won't Mitchell tell us when he's out?"

"Yeah, I'm sure he'll report. I just think that it might be a good idea if we could, well--monitor these sessions. That's why I asked Carter to come in here."

"You mean spy?" said Carter incredulously. "How?"

"Well, I thought we might use some of your Feuerwasser to bribe the guard to look the other way while I sneak into the guest quarters and duck into the wardrobe."

"Who's on duty?" asked Carter.

"Biedermann."

"Then it just might work," said Carter. "I hear he's been banned from the local tavern."

"That can give a man a terrible thirst," drawled Jenkins.

"How do you find these things out?" asked a bemused Sykes.

"Oh, just shooting the breeze, sir," replied Carter innocently.


	3. Idle Conversation

Sergeant Kinchloe slapped the side of his bunk to close the opening to the tunnel, nodded to Olsen who was watching the main door and reentered the colonel's office. The desultory discussion he had left after Hogan had asked him to radio London to report the arrival of the Dr. Falkner and request information appeared to have stalled. Carter had retreated to the lower bunk, sitting with his back against the wall and displaying a thousand mile stare. Newkirk and Lebeau kept darting surreptitious glances toward him and daggers at each other.

"Maybe it's not so bad," said Newkirk. "Schultz never caught on that he'd already met Carter before he'd actually been assigned to this camp."

Lebeau glared at the Englishman. "Only because he does not want to 'catch on'! Do you really think Dr. le Boche is so willing to ignore his eyes and ears?"

Kinch side-stepped around the Frenchman and handed Colonel Hogan a blue sheet of paper.

"That's the life and times Dr. Thomas Rainer Klaus Falkner. It's interesting, in that dry and academic sense of the word."

"Anything interesting in the not so dry and practical sense of the word?" asked Hogan glancing at the sheet. He read snippets aloud. "Born in Tübingen. Military service in the last war--wrong side, of course. Studied Medicine at Heidelberg. Visiting Scholar at Cambridge. Professor, University of Berlin 1925-1928. Lecturer at the New School in New York 1928-1931. Assistant Director of the Meier-Breaux Clinic in Bern 1932-1938. A lecture tour through the United States and Canada in 1938-1939 including Stanford, the University of Iowa, Chicago, Cornell and Smith College. Publications include---oh lord. You weren't kidding about academic. We're not hiring for the 'Varsity. Doesn't London have any real dirt?"

Hogan handed the sheet back.

"We've got orders to standby for further transmission at 0245," offered Kinch. "Maybe by then they'll dig up a co-ed that he dallied with."

"Not that kind of dirt, Kinch."

"Where are your priorities?" asked Lebeau. "That's exactly the kind of dirt I want to hear."

"Look at what you've done," said Hogan. "You've got him all worked up again."

"One more thing, Colonel," said Kinch. "Contact from Babylon. Requesting confirmation of Cub Charlie for three days starting Wednesday."

"Nothing doing!" snapped Hogan. "No cubs are leaving the den. And definitely not Carter."

Kinch shot a quick glance at Cub Charlie. Carter was the only one out of Papa Bear's organization who ever had personal contact with Babylon. Hogan, Kinch knew, hated Babylon requests, although he never actually said so. Any meeting required Carter to miss at least one roll call if not two. That was annoying enough, but London had also issued direct orders that Cub Charlie was to give no details regarding the Babylon operation to anybody—including Papa Bear. From what Kinch could gather the purpose of those meetings was usually to pass along information. It was usually hot stuff supported with film that Papa Bear sent on to England with the various Travelers that passed through Stalag 13.

"What did London say about the priority when you asked them to let you say no, sir?" asked Kinch.

"They said 'Figure it out, old boy, and cooperate." said Hogan sourly. "Of course that was before our little wrinkle arrived."

"Colonel, maybe it's not a bad way to lay low for a few days," said Carter suddenly.

An expression of relief briefly flashed across Hogan's face. The uncharacteristic silence of the normally chatty demolition man had bothered them all. Lebeau and Newkirk relaxed slightly, although the worried expressions on their faces did not completely disappear. Carter was taking an interest in the here and now again. Things couldn't be too bad, thought Kinch. Right?

"If he doesn't see me, he can't make the connection." Carter slid out of the bunk and stood. "I could head out after roll call tonight."

"Too risky," said Hogan. "An escape just when the Wehrmacht's top interrogator stops by for a visit? Burkhalter will know we have something big to hide and you can bet that the Gestapo will hear about it and use that coincidence as an excuse to pull in everybody in this barracks for questioning."

"If Falkner remembers him this whole operation is in danger," muttered Lebeau.

"Just how likely is Falkner to remember?" asked Kinch. "It's been nearly two years, hasn't it?"

Carter shrugged and shook his head.

"Carter, you've got to tell me everything," said Hogan flatly. "Every single word that passed between you and Falkner and every moment you spent in his presence. We've got to figure out the risk."

"I've been trying to remember," Carter said. He was silent for a long moment before he took a deep breath and began, "I guess you could say that we met officially during one of the group sessions on a Wednesday morning in November 1942."

"Officially?"

"Well, you see," Carter coughed. "I spent Tuesday afternoon hiding under the bed in the guest quarters while he conducted individual sessions."

Hogan grinned. "I knew the moment I met you that you were destined for this mission."

************

Biedermann was quite thirsty as it turned out. Not only did he ignore Captain Jenkins as he slipped into the guest quarters while Falkner was meeting with another group of prisoners in the recreation hall, but when another guard unexpectedly approached he decided he'd be helpful and pushed Lieutenant Carter in after him. Carter took the opportunity to make sure that Jenkins was well hidden behind the clothes hanging in the wardrobe and went to wait by the door to slip back outside as soon as the opportunity appeared. To his sudden horror he heard Biedermann loudly greet Dr. Falkner just outside.

In desperation he looked around for a hiding place. He immediately dismissed the small, cloth-covered table between the sofa and the armchair. The cloth was too short and didn't quite reach the floor. His eye fell upon the curtained alcove which housed the bed. He slipped through the gap in the drapery and debated whether it was necessary to crawl under the bed. He heard Dr. Falkner enter and the footsteps seemed to be heading his direction. Carter dove under the bed feeling vaguely resentful that he'd suddenly found himself in the middle of a bedroom farce without even the prospect of a beautiful girl.

He was just in time. He heard Dr. Falkner push the bathroom door open and turn on the tap. It sounded like he was washing his face. Carter was grateful that he hadn't even considered hiding in the bath.

There was a knock on the outer door and Dr. Falkner called out to whomever it was to enter. He emerged from the bathroom and adjusted the alcove curtains so that bed was hidden from sitting area. Carter could just hear one of the guards announce the arrival of Major Walters. Oh well, if he was stuck in here, he might as well act as a second pair of ears to help out Jenkins. He decided to risk crawling out from under the bed and crept forward to look out of the gap in curtains.

"Major Walters, thank you for joining me today." Dr. Falkner bowed slightly and waved the officer over to the sofa.

"What do you want, Doc?"

"Just to talk."

"I'm not telling you anything," declared Walters as he sat down.

"I am not asking you for military secrets. I am conducting a survey on the psychological condition of prisoners of war."

"I'm not telling you my personal secrets either," stated Major Walters emphatically. "And leave my mother out of it or I'll forget the 'gentleman' part of being an officer."

"You worry yourself needlessly, Major. I do not subscribe to Freud."

"Is that because your Führer doesn't approve of him?"

"No," said Dr. Falkner thoughtfully. "I always thought he had a rather unhealthy obsession with sex."

Walters was silent for a moment. When he spoke, he echoed, without even realizing, the thoughts of Carter and Jenkins.

"Just what do you consider 'unhealthy' about sex?"

And so the session went. As far as Carter could tell, Dr. Falkner made no attempt to steer the conversation in any direction at all. There was no question about where Walters had served, what his mission had been or what role he'd held in squadron leadership. It was just talk. Some of it interesting. Some of it amusing. Some of it rather dull. A bit like a conversation you might strike up with a fellow passenger on a train when you noticed he was reading a book that your aunt had suggested for you. Not that Carter's Aunt Bessie would have suggested Freud. She was more likely to lend him the latest Agatha Christie.

He returned to his dusty haven under the bed as Walters was escorted out emerging only when Kelly had arrived. Like Walters, he was initially hostile, but Dr. Falkner found an opening when he discovered that Kelly had an interest in archeology. The talk of digging caused Carter, and, as he found out later when they compared notes, Jenkins, a few minutes of tension, but no mention was made of the various excavations being conducted by the prisoners.

"Surely you do not believe in curses, Lieutenant?" asked Dr. Falkner.

"Heck, no. I went into that tomb myself back in '38. Lots of dust, some scorpions and things that slithered away." Kelly mused, "Kind of like the Stalag here, now that I think of it."

"Why did you give up your interest in archeology?"

"Oh, I didn't give it up. I just shifted away from Egyptology. Dad took me on a hunting trip with one of his business associates. Boy, that lodge sure was something. Mr. Phillips had the most amazing collection of Indian artifacts in a little museum right there on his ranch."

"I should think that there isn't much for the archaeologist to find," said Falkner.

"You'd be wrong, sir. Heck there's burial mounds all over the place and hardly anybody has done a thing with them! After that trip I went and changed my entire course and was nearly done when--" Kelly broke off as he suddenly remembered where he was. "Never mind."

"War changes plans for many people," said Dr. Falkner softly.

"Unless, of course, your plans are for war," snarled Kelly. "Are we done?"

Carter scrambled under the bed once again as the guard escorted Kelly out and Dr. Falkner began pacing the room while muttering under his breath. It was too quiet for Carter to make out the words even if his grasp of German had been better, but it seemed that the good doctor was clearly frustrated by the turn the last session had taken. Falkner took a deep breath and began to recite in a calm voice. It sounded like poetry. Carter strained to listen, but could make out only one line.

"Es war ein Traum--"

A knock interrupted the recitation and the guard brought in Lieutenant Mitchell.

It was at that moment Carter realized he had another problem. Why had Kelly mentioned dust? The German reputation for meticulousness, he was beginning to realize from his frequent visits under the bed, was a tad overrated. He felt the tell-tale tickle in his nostrils and his face contorted as he silently fought a sneeze. His eyes bulged and he tried to breathe out of his mouth. Slowly, he inched his way toward victory, willing the sneeze into non-existence. It didn't work.

"AHCHOO!"


End file.
